Bee searchers sought for survey

Wednesday

Aug 8, 2018 at 12:01 AMAug 9, 2018 at 1:53 PM

Residents in Boone County and other points in central Iowa are being asked to keep their eyes open for the endangered rusty patched bumble bee.

The bee is named after the rusty patch centrally located on the backs of workers and males, but not queens. According to a news release from the Iowa Department of Natural Resources, the bee once occupied grasslands and tallgrass prairies in the Upper Midwest and Northeast. In Iowa they can be found mainly in the northeast corner, concentrated in Black Hawk, Clayton, Johnson, Allamakee, Jackson and Winneshiek counties. A record of rusty patched bumble bees has recently been confirmed in Boone County, too.

The Iowa DNR is currently performing surveys to get a more complete understanding of the distribution of rusty patched bumble bees in Iowa, and is asking for residents to keep their eyes open and report any of the bees they may see.

The rusty patched bumble bee was designated as endangered by the federal government in 2017, after determining that the population had declined 87 percent in the last 20 years. The rusty patched bumble bee is facing a number of threats including, habitat loss, intensive farming, disease, pesticides and climate change.

Officials with the Iowa DNR said in the release that rusty patched and other species of bumble bees are important to protect as they provide essential ecological services for their respective ecosystems, especially for native flora, which includes wildflowers and the plants that produce the fruits and seeds that other wildlife depend on. They are also critical for the pollination of some of our favorite crops including blueberries, cranberries, and tomatoes. Officials said in the release that bumble bees are more effective pollinators than honey bees because of their ability to “buzz pollinate,” where the bees contract their indirect flight muscles to produce strong vibrations that forcibly expel the pollen from inside the flower.